


Hedge Over Heels

by XiuChen4Ever



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Autumn, Fluff, Hybrids, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-17 22:40:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21517612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XiuChen4Ever/pseuds/XiuChen4Ever
Summary: Minseok is sure his cute neighbor leaves those big piles of leaves in his yard on purpose.  How is a hedgehog hybrid supposed to resist burrowing into them?
Relationships: Kim Jongdae | Chen/Kim Minseok | Xiumin
Comments: 65
Kudos: 317
Collections: Round 3: Autumn and Winter - On the Snow





	Hedge Over Heels

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt Flake:** 626  
>  **Author's Note:** This was really fun to write! When I saw this prompt, I, like Minseok, couldn't resist diving into it.

🍂🍁🍂

Kim Minseok is a man of dignity and professionalism. He likes looking good in his tailored power suits, with his hair slicked back and the round glasses on his nose giving him an air of intelligence.

But Kim Minseok is also a hedgehog hybrid. Which means that his hair—his quills—do not like to stay obediently slicked back. He needs the glasses because his eyesight isn’t the best. And as good as it feels to stand straight and powerful in the board room commanding the respect of his colleagues, it feels even better to curl up somewhere cozy and doze, especially as fall advances. It’s hard to fight the hibernation instincts his hedgehog side still possesses. 

It’s especially hard when his neighbor, with his huge yard studded with trees, tends to rake the fallen leaves up into enticing orange piles. How is a poor hedgie-hybrid supposed to resist?

He can’t. 

So Minseok goes home from work every day, removes his stylish suit to hang tidily to await cleaning, changes into an oversized sweatshirt that comes down over hands and hips, leaves his glasses on his nightstand, and creeps shamefully into his neighbor’s yard.

Quills broken free from the pomade to once again halo his head, Minseok looks around furtively before crouching to crawl inside the largest pile. He knows that his neighbor has left this pile in the center of his back lawn on purpose. That if he were home, he’d be able to see it through his kitchen window. But Minseok gets home an hour before his neighbor which is just enough time to change, burrow deep, and drift off.

🍂🍁🍂

Minseok is annoyed when the fading daylight has the audacity to once again bathe his eyelids. He grunts, using one sweatshirt-covered paw to flip leaves back over his face. And then he sits up straight when his efforts inspire someone’s giggle.

“Jongdae,” Minseok mumbles, curling in on himself with embarrassment. “Sorry. I tried to resist. I’ll just go—”

“I made hot cocoa,” his amiable neighbor says, as usual not interested in Minseok’s cringing apologies.

Also as usual, Minseok blinks sleepily up at his too-cheerful neighbor, drawing a coo from the man that makes Minseok flex his quills low to cover his eyes defensively. 

“Come inside and have cocoa,” Jongdae says, reaching down to give Minseok a hand up out of the leaf pile. 

Sucking air rapidly between his teeth like a hiss, Minseok takes Jongdae’s hand with his fabric-covered fingers. He continues to hiss softly, self-conscious as Jongdae brushes stray leaves from his clothing and stands on tiptoes to blow them from his (flattened for safety) quills. Minseok’s quills spring back into defensive mode as soon as Jongdae’s face is clear, but he doesn’t resist as Jongdae takes his hand and leads him into the house.

“I got fall-colored marshmallows this time,” Jongdae announces as Minseok settles on one of the cushioned stools that line Jongdae’s breakfast (and hot cocoa) counter. “They seem more festive, don’t they?”

Minseok swallows a grunt as he blinks down at the rich brown cocoa set off by the red, yellow, and orange marshmallows floating in it. “Uh, yeah,” he says, because Jongdae is always so kind and understanding of Minseok’s hybrid peculiarities. He doesn’t deserve to just be grunted at for his troubles.

For several companionable moments, the only sounds are the two men slurping side by side at the counter. Even though Jongdae has left a bowl of marshmallows by his elbow expressly for the purpose, Minseok still feels bashful about slurping the half-melted marshmallows from his cocoa and replacing them with new brightly-colored pillows of sweetness. He’s going to have to do an extra lap at the gym in the morning—damn his fatten-up-for-winter instincts.

“I would have let you nap out there a little longer, but it’s getting so cold so early now that the sun sets so soon.”

This does earn a grunt, mostly because Minseok’s mouth is full of marshmallow.

“So, um. I have a surprise for you.”

Minseok freezes. Jongdae, his always laughing, confident neighbor, sounds rather unsure. And Minseok is struck by just how much he dislikes insecure-sounding-Jongdae and by just how odd it is that he’d have such a strong reaction.

Ever since Minseok moved into the neighborhood over a year ago, Jongdae has always been a good neighbor. Always ready with a cute smile and a friendly hello, going out of his way to shovel Minseok’s sidewalk in the winter so the hybrid wouldn’t slip, offering to mow his lawn or rake his yard. They chat at the mailbox or whenever Jongdae’s working in his yard as Minseok’s getting ready for a jog, but it’s not until this fall that the human had begun leaving what must be deliberately-large piles of leaves in his yard. And only in the last few weeks has Jongdae been inviting Minseok in for tea or cocoa when he’d find the hybrid curled up in them.

He always looks so delighted to uncover the dozing hedgehog. And he had quickly learned Minseok preferred cocoa and further still preferred a probably ridiculous-to-humans amount of marshmallows in it. And now after months of being confidently-friendly, the adorable human is stammering and rubbing at the back of his neck.

“I hope you don’t mind. It’s not meant to pressure you into anything. I’m really glad we’re friends and I’d never push for more if it would make you uncomfortable, I really want you to be comfortable but really my bed was the most comfortable place—”

“Your bed?” Minseok asks, quills rising in surprise.

“Ah, forget it, I’m sorry, please forget I said anything.” 

But Minseok is standing up, cocoa mug still clutched in his sweaterpaws, snuffling the air for clues to tell him which way the man’s bedroom is. He’s never been drawn to explore further than the kitchen—simple but modern appliances nestled between old-fashioned formica counter tops, softened by curtains and hand towels featuring apples and oranges and bell peppers. It’s a cozy kitchen and Minseok has become rather fond of it, but now he blows the delightful scent of chocolate from his sensitive nose to try to suss out just exactly what this ‘surprise’ is and whether he’s pleased or alarmed.

“Is it a scary surprise?” he asks, nose quivering a little with the effort to ignore the delicious cocoa still held beneath his face.

“Um. It’s not meant to be. It’s meant to be cozy. Because I don’t like the thought of you out there curled up in the cold and—”

“Show me?”

Jongdae’s face is rather similar to the reddish marshmallows floating in Minseok’s cocoa. “Uh. Sure…”

The human stands up, abandoning his cocoa on the counter top like a heathen. He leads the way down a short hallway to a bedroom done in rich jewel tones. In the center of the room is a queen-sized sleigh bed, deep ultramarine bedspread covered in… a pile of  _ leaves? _

“It’s not meant to be a proposition or anything! Just, I thought, I could give you a key and then you could curl up here for your little naps and then we could have cocoa when I get home, o-or you could just take the leaves to your own bed, I guess, but I really like our little cocoa dates—not that they’re actually  _ dates _ with any expectations or pressure or anything—”

“These are not real leaves.” The pile had fooled him at first because the leaves look very natural, but his nose doesn’t deceive him like his eyes sometimes do. To that sensitive organ, the leaves smell fake but not unpleasant.

Minseok sets down his mug on one of the burled-wood end tables in favor of poking his hand through his cuff and twirling one between his fingers. It’s meant to be a maple leaf, bright red-orange and as big as his hand with all the fingers spread. The veins are made of brownish plastic, but most of the leaf is soft fabric, pleasant against his skin when he experimentally rubs it against his cheek.

“Er, no. Real leaves seemed like they’d get crumbly and uncomfortable after a while. But if you’d rather have real leaves I could—”

“These are nice,” Minseok decides. 

He sets the one in his hand back onto the massive pile, then fights his hedgehog instincts. This isn’t his house, not his bed, not a semi-public area like his neighbor’s back garden where it’s relatively normal to find someone passing through. Hanging out. Or curled up beneath too-appealing piles of leaves.

But Jongdae had said it was a surprise for him. For Minseok specifically, because he doesn’t want Minseok to be cold. Jongdae said out loud that he  _ wants _ Minseok to curl up here, so the hedgehog gives in to his instincts and burrows his way into the center of the cozy-looking pile. 

It doesn’t take him nearly as long as usual to curl up comfortably—the bed beneath him is of course way nicer than the ground and the soft fabric of the leaves isn’t at all scratchy on his skin. He doesn’t need to completely cover himself with a protective layer of thick fabric so he sits up again, torso emerging from the leaves so he can pull his sweatshirt off over his head.

When the fabric is clear of his face Minseok can see Jongdae blinking at him, lips parted in astonishment. Minseok feels his face heat even though he’s still wearing a ribbed sleeveless undershirt. Suddenly self-conscious, he feels his quills lift, flinging some leaves from his head into his lap.

“Sorry,” he says, second-guessing his earlier conclusions and reaching for his sweatshirt again. “You probably didn’t mean for me to just hedgehog your entire bed—”

“No! I mean, it’s fine—it’s for you. Please stay. And be comfortable. That’s, um. What I wanted.” Jongdae blushes the color of the fabric leaves covering Minseok’s lower body.

“Oh,” the hedgehog says, still feeling a little awkward for just barging into someone’s room and inviting himself to a nap, whether his kind neighbor had intended for him to do so or not. “Well. This is great—really comfortable. And no bugs will crawl across my face this way—I always hated that. But, um. I would feel bad about kicking you out of your own bed. You got lots of leaves, and your bed’s really big. So, maybe we could, um. Share?”

Jongdae’s face turns a color Minseok thinks might be called “puce.” 

“Only if you want!” the hedgehog hastens to add, questioning his conclusions yet again. “That probably sounded like a come-on. Not that you’re unattractive, just that, well, I’m just the weird guy that keeps sleeping in your yard and you’ve been really indulgent but now I’m in your bed and—” 

But Jongdae is tugging off his own sweatshirt to reveal a thin T-shirt beneath. And then he’s climbing into the fabric leaf pile with Minseok like a total amateur, attempting to dive in from the top rather than burrowing into the side like a sensible creature. Minseok helps him cover himself properly and then they’re both hidden beneath the leaves, unable to see each other or anything else.

With vision being a less-acute sense for him anyway, Minseok doesn’t particularly mind, especially since he can smell Jongdae, lingering cocoa overlapping with the human’s cinnamon-scented toiletries and the fresh-apple aroma of the bedding beneath them. The overall aura is of comfort, coziness, and  _ home. _

On impulse, Minseok reaches out through the leaves to wrap an arm around Jongdae’s warm body. The human lets out a dear little sigh and squirms closer, leaves rustling around them as they twine together. The heat of Jongdae in his arms is enchanting, as is the way the human fits perfectly against the hybrid. 

Deeply glad that at least one of his instinctive behaviors turned out so well, Minseok makes a contented noise deep in his throat that might be described as a purr if he were a cat instead of a hedgehog. In response, Jongdae lets out a shaky chuckle.

“I can’t believe this worked,” the human huffs, breath puffing warm against Minseok’s collarbone.

“What worked?”

“Minseok. I’ve been trying to get your attention since you moved in last year. I have tried everything else I could think of. Piling a bunch of silk leaves on my bed was a last ditch effort to get you in it.”

Minseok is very glad the leaves around them prevent his blush from being visible. “Oh,” he says. “Well. I knew you were making big piles in your yard on purpose. But I thought you were just being nice, since I can’t seem to stay out of them.”

“I’m just a dumb human,” Jongdae whines, squirming against him a little. “I didn’t know how else to court a hedgehog hybrid.”

A laugh bubbles up from Minseok’s chest. “Despite my embarrassing leaf-related urges, we’re people more than animal. You could have just  _ asked _ like a normal human being.”

There’s a beat of silence. “Well, now I feel like an ignorant ass.”

Minseok pulls him closer, smiling at the human’s embarrassed little whines. “Don’t worry about it—your plan to lure a hedgehog into your bed worked just fine, after all.”

He snuffles through the leaves until his nose meets warm skin. He nuzzles the softness, then applies an experimental kiss.

Jongdae’s whine becomes more of a gasp and the human shifts until lips meet lips beneath the leaves. Jongdae tastes of cocoa and delight and Minseok’s fingers tiptoe up the human’s back to tangle in the soft hair at the nape of his neck. In turn Jongdae trails his own fingers across Minseok’s cheek, pausing by his ear.

“Is it okay to touch your quills?” the human whispers against Minseok’s lips.

“If you want. They’re not soft or anything, though. And if you try to pet them against the grain you’ll have regrets.”

Jongdae’s chuckle tickles Minseok’s lips. “Good to know,” he says, and then tentative fingertips are sliding over the hybrid’s head.

Minseok keeps his quills flat and relaxed and Jongdae quickly gains confidence, humming when he strokes the stiff modified hairs enough to make them rustle slightly against each other, not unlike a pile of autumn leaves. 

The hybrid hums back, enjoying the soft warmth of Jongdae’s lips against his, the firm strokes of fingers through his quills, the silken tickle of the fabric leaves against the bare skin of his neck and arms. 

“Keep kissing me like that and this leaf pile is going to get way too warm for a nap,” Minseok cautions.

“Well… we could always, I dunno. Take off more clothes?” One of Jongdae’s palms slides down the heated skin of Minseok’s arm.

“I fail to see how exactly that will cool things off.”

“...Do you actually want to cool things off?”

The hedgie-hybrid smothers a yawn. “Only for the moment. If I’m finally going to get to undress my hot-and helpful neighbor with more than my eyes—” Minseok gasps, digging his fingers into Jongdae’s ribs. “You little brat. You and your shirtless ‘oh I’ll just mow your lawn too since I have the mower out…’”

Jongdae’s giggles are worth all of Minseok’s summer suffering. “I told you I was trying to get your attention!” 

In another apparent effort to do so, a suspicious amount of Jongdae’s tickle-induced writhing rubs his hips up against Minseok’s. With a little growl, Minseok wraps arms and legs around the whining, wiggly human, forcing him into stillness as the hedgie-hybrid yawns again. 

“You made me a cozy leaf pile,” he murmurs. “I have to nap in it for a bit. Give me half an hour, then we can knock these lovely leaves all over your bedroom floor.”

Jongdae’s whines melt into a wicked little chuckle. 

🍂🍁🍂

The silk leaves do end up all over the floor once Minseok’s little nap revitalizes him enough to wrestle rather than merely cuddle. All the rolling around and laughing is highlighted by playing rock-paper-scissors to decide who tops this time, Jongdae cooing over Minseok’s tiny little tail, and Jongdae’s enthusiastic prostate prodding making Minseok literally squeal.

It’s all very undignified. Even more so when Jongdae sticks several of the silk leaves to the mess on Minseok’s stomach. Indignant squeaking results, followed by a tussle that ends when the pair of them roll off the bed to hit the leaf-strewn floor, fall-colored fabric adhering to sweaty bodies.

“Humans are so gross,” Minseok complains, peeling a silk leaf away from his ass.

“Hedgehogs are so adorable,” Jongdae counters, pretending to help but really only after an excuse to gently tug the hybrid’s tail.

“We’re not adorable,” Minseok grumbles. “We’re nearsighted and sleepy and stupid enough to let conniving humans lure us into what is now an entirely obvious trap.”

“I have more marshmallows,” Jongdae sing-songs, lifting Minseok’s long-abandoned mug from the nightstand.

Minseok eyes him for a considering moment. The human is really cute. And tolerant of his hybrid idiosyncrasies. And if he’d gone through all this trouble, he must really be head over heels for Minseok. Which is very flattering. Minseok could easily see himself falling for this smiling guy for more than his pretty face and lovely body (even though those things are very nice indeed).

“…Fiiine, I’ll give up and be enticed.”

“Good, because I really had no other ideas if the leaf piles didn’t work.”

🍂🍁🍂


End file.
